Jacob, Matthew and I decided to give Goldland a try while we waited for our
guests to arrive. This is one of the nicest looking games I’ve seen to date.
Very high quality cardboard cutouts, solid wooden pieces, and fantastic
artwork. This just arrived on Saturday and only had the German rules so I went
to the ‘geek and printed the very well done English
version.

Matthew’s strategy was to get to the “goal” square as quickly as possible, get
his amulet, and take the pool of reserve gold. Jacob spent his time finishing
as many adventures as he could, then working his way to the amulet. I never
quite made it to the goal to get my amulet, but focused exclusively on
finishing adventures. On the second-to-last turn, I managed to steal an
adventure token away from Jacob, which put me in the lead for good. My initial
rating is 8 – especially since it will be easy to get the kids to play this
one again.

This was a first play for all but Doug and Mimi, who had played this recently
at the Gathering of Friends in Columbus. I had specifically requested Doug to
bring this one. Julie decided to join us.

Wow – lots of choices to make in this game, and I can’t comment too much on
strategy – if you want that, talk to Julie since she smoked us! In the first
era, she focused on getting many farmers and managed to remain pharoah each
round. In the second era, she built pyramids like crazy and ran way with the
victory.

I want to play this a few more times before I consider purchasing it. Given
the choice between this and Puerto Rico, I think I would choose PR.

Kevin was eager to try this trading game, based loosely on the popular card
game Bohnanza. Matthew decided to join us. This was a bit challenging for him,
though afterwards he said he loved it (though not as much as Goldland). My
strategy wasn’t too involved – finish as many of my contracts as I could,
trading as necessary along the way. I had a few fortunate “invitations” that
brought me closer to my target cities, and managed to win the game. I’d like
to think there’s more to this game than that, but I don’t think there is. I’ll
give this one a 6 – I’d play it if offered, but won’t seek it out.

We played this very light card game as a closer. The deck contains cards
representing dishes of a king’s feast (ham, wine, turkey, etc.). Each turn, 8
cards from the deck are laid out in front of the players. In turn, a player
chooses one of the dishes to add to his collection (there may be multiples).
Any cards not taken go to the king’s table. At the end of the game, you get
points for each card of a particular dish – the points per card being the
total number that the king holds. So, if you hold 3 wine cards in your hand
and the king ends up with 5 on his table, you would get 15 points.

The catch is this: if you have more cards than the king, you don’t get any
points for that dish. There is also the dragon cards, which you can play to
eat some (two cards) of a particular dish from the king’s table. This is how
you can mess with your neighbor.

Fun game – suspect my kids would like it. I’ll give it a 7 – comparable to
other lighter fare like Fluxx.